This moment that is both an extension and a collapsing.
And so I do the only thing I can, the only thing I know how to do right here and now in this car: I take us out of it.
I reach over and thread my fingers through his hair. I know, because I know everything—that he doesn’t always shower after the ocean, that his hair will grow crusty with salt water. I feel the birthmark, raised, on the back of his neck, trail my fingers down the constellation of freckles below his right ear.
It’s like a house, I think. One I could sleepwalk through and never hit a wall.
I thread my thumb over his lips, and then his arms are cupping my back and we are kissing.
His lips land on mine, hard, and he pulls me toward him—toward the passenger seat. He unclicks my seat belt, never letting his hands leave my body, and then I’m climbing over the center console and straddling his lap.
My legs hit the seat belt buckle and my backside is crammed up against the glove compartment.
“God,” Stone says. “I missed you.”
I lean down my head in answer. His mouth is open and hot. I remember those small, urgent kisses from when we were teens. When we had ten minutes, maybe even less, to make each other’s bodies rise and fall in quiet corners of the house.
It’s hot in here. The windows start to steam.
I pull off my shirt.
I let him trail his fingers down my stomach, over my shoulders and breasts. One hand travels down, down, until it pressesagainst me—yes, there—and the other cups the back of my head. His mouth is on my neck, behind my ear.
I feel this moment like a kaleidoscope—all the memories blending and merging together. Us on our boards, on towels in the sand, in my bedroom right before dawn. In this parking lot, fifteen years ago.
Stone pulls his lips from mine and kisses my neck, the dip of my collarbone. “I remember you,” he whispers into my body. So does she.
The rest of our clothes, gone. I feel his body naked against mine. The most new and familiar thing.
Sex with Stone felt like being let into a vault. It was like he had the key and was unlocking this secret, valuable world. And I was terrified—for years after—that our experience together wasn’t our experience at all but his. That it was his presence and talent and touch that made it special, and that he could replicate it with anyone else he wanted. That all the sex he had was that connected and precious. For years after, I couldn’t think about it without crying—what his body was gifting someone else. What he was sharing—readily, frequently—that I could never seem to replicate.
But here, now, I know it wasn’t him, butus. Some seismic, hormonal grafting that makes our bodies designed for each other. That makes this moment feel like all the ones before it. Like we’ve only ever been here.
It feels like we are traveling back, closing the space between what we were and are. Time is an accordion—it expands and then collapses, expands and collapses.
I move my hips against his, slowly and then more urgently.
“Come for me,” he says, and I let myself go in the way I haven’t for so long. I let myself go like I’m sixteen again, in this very same parking lot, with this very same man.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
We sit in silence for a few minutes afterward—breathing against each other.
Stone hands me my shirt. I put it on. We get dressed slowly and then quickly, covering what we were just moments ago so desperate to reveal. Stone has ended up in the driver’s seat and me in the passenger.
He kisses the side of my head and then, without asking, puts my car in reverse and drives us home.
We pull up to the house, but neither of us makes a move to get out.
“I want to say something,” he says. “But I don’t know exactly what, and I’m afraid of getting it wrong.”
I also have no idea. Because to say something and have it matter means the undoing of so much. And yet to have it not matter, to have it be anecdotal, is somehow just as bad.
“I don’t think we should,” I say. “Right? Maybe we shouldn’t say anything.”
So much of the tension that filled up this car has dissolved now. What is left in its place, tomorrow, will be grief for Bonnie.
“OK,” he says. “We won’t.”
